When you subscribe we will use the information you provide to send you these newsletters. Sometimes they’ll include recommendations for other related newsletters or services we offer. OurPrivacy Noticeexplains more about how we use your data, and your rights. You can unsubscribe at any time.

A councillor challenged Cheshire East’s transparency claims by inviting our reporter to cover a behind-closed-doors meeting to investigate an allegation made against him by the council. Cllr David Marren asked Belinda Ryan, chief reporter of Cheshire Live sister publication The Crewe Chronicle, to attend Friday’s meeting at Crewe Municipal Buildings so the allegation made against him can be made public. Here she gives an account of what happened.

Under Cheshire East Council’s code of conduct no councillor accused of any wrongdoing by officers or other councillors is allowed to make those allegations public so cannot publicly defend himself/herself.

Cheshire Live still has no idea what the council has accused Cllr David Marren of because the external lawyer employed by Cheshire East to investigate refused to conduct the meeting in the presence of a reporter and, eventually, I left.

Speaking after the meeting Cllr Marren said: “I am a passionate advocate of openness and transparency and so when a complaint was made against me I felt it would be inconsistent and hypocritical to have it dealt with in secret.

Councillor David Marren

“Accordingly I invited Belinda Ryan, a journalist with our local newspaper, to accompany me to hear everything, without me disclosing in advance any detail so that she was not tainted and could make her own impartial judgment. I despair that the council’s lawyers were not sympathetic to frank and open discussion.”

Cllr Marren was removed as vice chair of both audit and governance and the constitution committees not long after he publicly criticised the authority over allegations of bullying and its failure to pay the minimum wage to some care workers.

After Friday’s meeting Cllr Marren, who represents Haslington, said: “I am not going to stop speaking out against moral and ethical wrong in Cheshire East Council irrespective of what is thrown at me. I will not be bullied or intimidated to silence and I challenge Cheshire East Council, if they wish to pursue this issue against me, to hold any hearing in public. I dare them.”

He continued: “I feel deeply concerned and affronted by the accusations levelled against me and doubtful of the fairness of an investigative process which requires me to be interviewed by a lawyer, in the pay of Cheshire East Council.

Read More

Related Articles

“My motives and actions have only ever been to seek out justice and to tackle an embedded culture of corporate secrecy and bullying. This complaint is symptomatic, I want everyone to know of the complaint against me and who has made it and why, so that I can publicly defend myself.

“In my very first year as a councillor, back in 2011, I challenged the bullying culture at CEC and started campaigning for transparency. I helped to reveal the Lyme Green situation. I have since responded to a number of requests from employees for help where procedure and process has been flouted or ignored by senior officers.

“This is an unfounded and vindictive allegation against me that I want to talk about. Any support I give to any employee is for the greater good of preventing the authority from ignoring its moral and legal obligations.

"I do not believe I broke any code of conduct when the outcome justified the means. I say this as it was because of my continued resilience and persistence that fairness eventually prevailed and I do not believe it would have done so, had I not firmly challenged the senior management position.

“In summary my motives have always been to champion transparency and speak out for those in the authority who have been wronged. On this occasion this has been deliberately and maliciously portrayed by those with a vested interest as breaching protocol.”

We ask Cheshire East to explain secrecy surrounding complaints meeting

Cheshire Live has asked Cheshire East to explain why, when I was invited to a meeting by a councillor to hear the allegations made against him, I was not allowed to report it.

We asked Cheshire East the following questions:

Why does the council not allow councillors to make public any allegations made against them if they so wish?

Why does the council not allow the press to cover meetings where allegations have been made (especially where a councillor has requested openness and transparency)?

If the council finds against Cllr Marren in this case, what is the most severe ‘punishment’ he could receive?

How many councillors are being investigated by Cheshire East Council? How much has this cost the council tax payer so far? How much is it estimated the final bill will be?

Who authorised the commissioning of external lawyers for this investigation and why was it not done in-house?

Cheshire East paid for the overnight accommodation of the external lawyer (I’m assuming the council also paid for the assistant). How much was the hotel bill please?

A Cheshire East spokesperson said: “The arrangements for dealing with standards complaints against members states: ‘The complaints process is confidential. This means that during each stage of the process up to and, in some cases, including the holding of a sub-committee hearing to determine a complaint, matters are dealt with in confidence.’

“The complaints process was approved by council to comply with the Localism Act 2011and individual councillors do not have the right to waive the confidentiality of the process even where the process is considering a complaint made against them.

“Importantly, this requirement for confidentiality is not only to protect members who are accused of any wrongdoing, and against whom no finding has yet been made, it is also to protect other individuals who may be involved or identified as part of an investigation.

“As these are confidential matters under statute, it is not possible for a member of the press to attend any meeting that considered matters as part of an ongoing investigation.

“Where, following an investigation, the monitoring officer determines that it is in the public interest for the matter to be considered by the audit and governance hearing sub-committee, a sub-committee will be convened to determine whether the subject member has failed to comply with the code of conduct. The hearing sub-committee may publish its findings in respect of the subject member’s conduct.

“We are very sorry to hear that the meeting with the councillor did not provide the expected outcome. The council’s website does contain full details of the arrangements for dealing with standards complaints against members, which deals with these matters and may assist in avoiding any future misunderstanding.

Read More

Related Articles

“The number of standards complaints against members received is regularly reported to audit and governance committee. Any costs incurred form part of the expenditure reported to council in the end of year accounts which are available for public inspection in June.

“The arrangements for dealing with standards complaints against members, as referred to above, sets out potential remedies, where wrongdoing is identified, through the investigation process. The procedure outlines that if the monitoring officer decides that the complaint merits formal investigation, they will appoint an investigating officer. This may be another senior officer at the council, another council or an external investigator.

“The requirement of confidentiality for any ‘live’ ongoing complaint means that we cannot give more details at this point.”

More Cheshire East stories

Chronicle comment by Belinda Ryan

Last week a councillor being investigated by Cheshire East asked me – as a member of the press – to attend the ‘investigation meeting’ so we could report on the allegation the council had made against him.

I explained to the lawyer being paid by Cheshire East to investigate, that Cllr David Marren had invited me to report on the allegation made against him in the interests of ‘openness and transparency’ but the lawyer refused to go ahead with the meeting unless I left.

I reluctantly left, because if the meeting was adjourned that would have been more expense to the council tax payer.

Cheshire East Council claims to be ‘open and transparent’. Council leader Rachel Bailey says it at nearly every meeting I attend – and I attend a lot of meetings.

But maybe the council needs to look up the definition of transparency.

Read More

Related Articles

According to the online Cambridge Dictionary, transparency means ‘the quality of being done in an open way without secrets’.

I have no idea what allegation has been made against Cllr Marren - under the council’s constitution he is not allowed to tell me or anyone. It has to be kept a secret!

He invited me to the meeting so I could report on the allegation and report his defence.

In the interests of openness and transparency I would be informing the public what one of their elected councillors is alleged to have done and shown how the council deals with the situation.

I would also have been able to show you, the council tax payers, how your money is being spent - after all, you are footing the bill for all these hearings (whether the allegations relate to officers or councillors) and, so far, all have been held in secret.

Cheshire East has recently spent an estimated £1m of your money investigating three of its top officers and the people footing the bill, the public, have no idea what the officers involved were alleged to have done. Neither have the council’s own councillors. It’s all been kept a secret.

Cheshire East’s argument for this secrecy has been that it is protecting the privacy of those officers involved.

In this case, regarding Cllr Marren, we have a councillor who wants the allegation out in the open - and still he is not allowed to reveal anything and I was asked to leave the meeting he invited me to.

Cllr Marren says the allegation made against him by the council is ‘unfounded and vindictive’.

As I’ve previously stated, I don’t know what the allegation is - but why won’t Cheshire East let me report it? Why does it insist on being so secretive?

In this country anyone charged with a criminal offence has the right to defend themselves in public - yet Cheshire East has denied one of its own councillors that same right for allegedly breaking the council’s code of conduct. How many other councillors have also been treated in this way?